


lead me to your door

by smallblueandloud



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Episode: s05e21 Gaza, Essbie's 2020 Fic Posting Extravaganza, F/M, HOWEVER josh is my baby boy and nothing will ever change that, Narrative Distance, POV Alternating, blood mentions, guess who is emotional????? it ME!!!!, i BELIEVE it's non-graphic? but if not please let me know, i don't know how to tag that but i played with narrative distance in this fic and had FUN with it, just mentions of josh's gunshot wound from 2x01 but like... take care of yourselves y'all, okay but surprisingly donna is barely in this, there's no hating on colin in this fic btw! josh is PINING HARD but colin loves donna too!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-22 19:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22188565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallblueandloud/pseuds/smallblueandloud
Summary: Josh should really play Minesweeper and then take a nap. We, who aren’t feeling what he’s feeling, know this. He’s been awake through a very stressful few hours, and the adrenaline crash means he’s not going to be thinking straight until he gets some rest.However, he doesn’t know this.He’s not thinking straight, after all.He boots up the saved files section, goes to Emails, and pulls up the most recent one, labelled Subject: Updates from Donna from Gaza (pt 10).He starts to read.(or, two men, and their distance from Donna - physical and otherwise)
Relationships: Colin Ayres/Donna Moss, Josh Lyman/Donna Moss
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	lead me to your door

**Author's Note:**

> so i am AWARE that i was writing this fic..... four months ago? but consider: i got busy and just plain forgot to post it. the title is from _the long and winding road_ , which fits the mood VERY well and which i am emotional about for.... joshdonna reasons.
> 
> the whole idea of narrative distance was inspired by [this very informative tumblr post](https://smallblueandloud.tumblr.com/post/187263329250/narrative-distance-chinhands-do-tell)! check it out, it's a cool concept.

_Ten hours earlier_

Two men stand together, alone. Around them, the office is bustling. Around them, no one will meet their eyes.

They’re in the most important building in the Western Hemisphere, but what’s most important to _them,_ right now, is a bomb in Gaza and its immediate consequences.

“Josh,” says the elder one, laying his hand on the younger’s arm. “You go be where you need to be.”

“Leo,” says the younger, to the man who will never quite be his father. He sounds like he’s at a loss for words. He sounds like he’s choking.

“Go,” says the elder. “We can manage without you.”

Still, the younger hesitates.

“She needs you,” says the elder man, Chief of Staff to the President of the United States. “Donna needs you.”

The younger man takes a deep breath. By the next, he’s gone, the door swinging behind him.

* * *

_Nine hours earlier_

God, how he hates politics.

Politics are why people are suffering here in Gaza, why his friends have lost their jobs and families and lives.

Politics are what’s wrong with the world, really, that and the hatred that seems to define humanity.

And right now, politics are why Donna was blown up, and why he still hasn’t been able to find out where she is, two hours after they took her away.

“Excuse me!” Colin shouts, at the most powerful-looking American around. The area is teeming with reporters, assessing damages and looking vaguely sorry as they face their cameras, and he’s had a hell of a time getting information out of any sort of official while they’re hovering close by. Hopefully, the fact that he’s standing a good ten meters from the nearest reporter will convince a politician to give him answers.

This one has red hair, and looks rather harried as she makes her way towards him, still finishing her conversation with a stern-looking man - probably a bodyguard - who tenses every time someone brushes up against them.

“And I need to be able to-” She interrupts herself, coming to a stop in front of him. “Yes?” 

The bodyguard scrutinizes him carefully.

“What do you need?” asks the woman.

“My name is-“ he starts, and then stops. He’s not used to this kind of hesitation, but then he’s not used to becoming so attached to women named Donna who made excellent political targets-

“Can you help me?” he says, instead, and instantly regrets it - she has no idea what he needs, and now he just sounds foolish.

The woman looks confused, for a minute, before she looks more closely at him. Some of the tension in her shoulders seems to release, briefly. “You’re Donna’s photographer, aren’t you?”

He’s only known Donna for a week, and he’d had no intention of seeing her when she left Gaza. In the beginning, in fact, he’d had no idea of going at all beyond sex. Now, though, he’s not surprised at the warm feeling in his chest, to be called Donna’s anything, and how quickly it holds his panic at bay.

“Yes,” he says. “I need to find her. Do you- is she- who are you, exactly?”

“I’m Andy Wyatt,” says the woman, holding out her hand. “I’m the- god, I hate saying this- I’m the surviving Congressmember.”

“Oh,” he says, shaking it, somehow. It hadn’t occurred to him, really, that others had suffered losses. Not viscerally, the way it is now, looking at this American woman with ash on her clothes. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” says Congresswoman Wyatt. “As to your question, all I know is what they’ve told the White House. They’re taking her to a medical hospital in our base in Germany.”

“Germany,” Colin repeats, processing. Godawful Americans and their complications. “You mean- how am I supposed to-“

“I can get you in, probably,” she interrupts. “You’ll have to wait a few hours to let this die down, but a friend of mine - CJ Cregg, you may know of her - probably has written testimony through email that you and Donna were- close, I guess, and that’s enough for now. I can-“

She hesitates, looking at him closely again. It takes him a minute to realize that she’s searching for something in his face - and she must find it, somehow, because she blinks and smiles at him, in the middle of this desert with the blood of three Americans still sinking into the sand. “I can vouch for you,” she says. “They’ll let you in. I can probably arrange a flight for you, too.”

Relief and gratefulness feel like cool air in his lungs, the first relief from the heat that he’s felt in days. “Thank you,” he says. _“Thank_ you.”

* * *

_Eight hours earlier_

Josh Lyman is bad at plane travel.

It’s something he’s just decided, 30 minutes into an eight hour flight to an American military hospital. This is because he’s handling this particular flight rather terribly.

He’d probably insist - even in his private thoughts - that it’s because of the boredom. And Josh _is_ bored, that’s true. But there’s more to it than that. Although Josh is frankly terrible at being bored, his usual strategy works well on long flights. He goes to sleep and wakes up in a new country. Problem solved.

Except that Josh is bored. Which means his usual strategy _isn’t_ working.

The real issue, then: Josh can’t sleep. And it isn’t because of any flight-related nerves. It’s more likely because of what’s waiting for him on the other side of his flight.

Or, more accurately, what may no longer be waiting for him. There’s no way for him to know what’s happened on land _until_ they land, so all he can do is stew in anxiety, with nothing much to distract him. Washington DC to Frankfurt, Germany is a rather long distance, even with modern jet engines and a laptop to keep him company.

Even worse is the fact that the laptop is on airplane mode and can only really run about three things: Microsoft Word, Minesweeper, and saved files.

Josh should really play Minesweeper and then take a nap. We, who aren’t feeling what he’s feeling, know this. He’s been awake through a very stressful few hours, and the adrenaline crash means he’s not going to be thinking straight until he gets some rest.

However, _he_ doesn’t know this.

He’s not thinking straight, after all.

He boots up the saved files section, goes to Emails, and pulls up the most recent one, labelled Subject: Updates from Donna from Gaza (pt 10).

He starts to read.

* * *

_Seven hours earlier_

Colin is still waiting for the media fervor to die down and still feeling nervous about Donna. Congresswoman Wyatt - “Call me Andy,” she’d insisted, about twenty minutes in - is still fielding news crews, American investigators, and regular calls from a man named Toby.

She answers the most recent one, turning to glance at him. “It’s gonna be a while before we can get you on a flight,” she says to him, apologetically. Then: “Hi, Toby,” without looking away. “Give me a second. Colin, you should go home and take a shower, maybe a nap. I’ll call you when we can arrange something. Hey, Toby,” she says, turning her attention back to her call. “Yeah, Huck doesn’t like that kind - you’re gonna have to...”

“Thank you,” he says, although she doesn’t hear him. He feels slightly lost in this huge crowd, in a way that he hasn’t before. He doesn’t like the feeling.

He figures it’s probably half adrenaline crash and half anxiety about a surgery about to happen, three thousand miles away.

He can only help one of those things.

Colin turns, goes home. He falls straight into bed without taking off his shoes. Two minutes later, he’s asleep.

* * *

_Six hours earlier_

Josh is still reading Donna’s emails, over and over again.

* * *

_Five hours earlier_

“We have a flight for you,” says Andy, over the phone. “Get to the airport in twenty minutes.”

“Thanks,” says Colin, picking up his bag and walking out the door. He’s still in the same shoes.

* * *

_Four hours earlier_

Josh wishes he has a sense memory to go over, one that he could turn over and over in his mind as he sits in his seat in this plane, unable to sleep. One of the blast itself, with the heat and the sound rolling over him in waves, or maybe the shock, wet and ragged in his stomach, as he stumbles over to the car that Donna had been in.

He’s seen the official SUVs used in the Middle East before. He knows what one must’ve looked like upside down. He can even imagine the scene - but none of it helps.

Instead, all he’s left with is the memory of Rosslyn. How it felt to have a hole in his chest, and to press his hands to it - hysterically, without any real sort of thought at all - and try to hold the blood in. Keep his heart beating, in some ironic facsimile of CPR. The shock, and then the slow creep of fear as they rushed him through the hospital, still conscious.

That was the worst part for him - the hospital. The fear. He thinks that’s probably what caused him the most issues, afterwards.

He has no information about Donna. He has no idea what state she was in when the ambulance got to her, or when they flew her to Germany.

He wishes he could hope for no injuries, or few injuries. That it was an overprotective doctor and shock that got her packed away on a five hour flight to an American hospital.

But he can’t bring himself to live in that kind of denial.

Instead, he finds himself hoping they knocked her out, first.

* * *

_Three hours earlier_

Colin sits in a seat in a tiny plane - the best that Andy could get him, under the circumstances. He’s flipping through the photos on his camera.

He lingers on a picture of Donna, the one he took right before she got into the SUV. We don’t know what he’s feeling, but it’s probably a sense of shock, still - an urge to go back, and redo everything. To run and yell and stop her from stepping inside.

He sighs, and sets the camera down.

Good idea, Colin, we, the observers, think. It’s been a long day, and a one hour power nap in your hotel room isn’t enough for you to recover.

He closes his eyes, and falls asleep immediately.

(Or, at least - that’s what we _hope_ he was able to do.)

* * *

_Two hours earlier_

Josh bursts through the doors, running despite knowing how nervous it makes the military. He’s nervous, too: he _hates_ hospitals, especially after spending so much of the flight thinking about his own- the- well, the last time he’d been in one.

He hates blood just as much, and his stomach is already clenching in preparation for all of the stuff that he’s about to see. But he swallows down the pain - 

leaving room for the fear, all the fear, the all-encompassing fear that it won’t have been enough and he’ll have just come to Germany for nothing, _nothing,_ that she will have died without knowing that he came to see her, to sit at her side in the way that she waited in a beige room for an entire night while he was in surgery, and that it was _his fault_ \- 

Josh takes a deep breath, coming to a hard stop at the desk.

“I’m looking for Donnatella Moss,” he tells the receptionist. “My name is Josh Lyman, from the White House. I can- can I-”

The receptionist looks over her glasses at him.

_Please,_ he thinks. “Can you tell me where she is?

The woman smiles at him, sort of pleasantly.

“Josh Lyman?” she asks. She clicks her mouse a couple times, and reads something, before looking up again. “You’re in her file. She’s in room 443.”

“Thank-” he says, and the words stick in his throat. He takes a deep breath. His whole being feels like it’s being pulled upward, leftward, to the room where he imagines she is. She’s _alive._ “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” says the woman, sounding doubtful. She looks him over. “You need something, honey? You seem pretty out of it.”

“No, I’m-” he starts, and then finds himself gasping. He takes a few deep breaths, trying desperately to calm his racing heart. There’s no need to be nervous, except that there really _is-_

“I’m- I’m in her file?”

He has no idea why he asked that, except that with not having to focus on running, his brain has remembered that he should have to get into this hospital on his own credentials, not on any sort of note in Donna’s file with the federal government.

_I’m in a note in Donna’s file with the federal government?_ he thinks. _That’s- that’s weird._

“Yes, honey,” she says. She sounds like she’s explaining something very simple, from somewhere very far away. “You’re on her list.”

“Her list?”

“For emergencies. For us to call. We _tried_ to call you when we figured out her name,” she says, gently. “While she was in surgery. After we talked with her mom.”

“Oh-”

He spares a moment to feel guilty. He doesn’t even _know_ who’s in his file, much less if Donna’s in it to get a call when he’s admitted to a military hospital.

She probably isn’t.

But she was always the more considerate one, wasn’t she, while he tried his best but couldn’t ever seem to be _nice_ enough to show her-

_“I’m just saying, if you were in an accident, I wouldn’t stop for a beer.”_

_“If_ you _were in an accident, I wouldn’t stop for red lights.”_

Well. Here he is. Trying his best to show her _something._

“I was on a flight, but- uh- Thank you,” he says, to the receptionist. He adjusts his grip on his backpack. “Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome, honey,” she says. “Give my best to her.”

“Sure,” he says, already turning to the elevator, to room number 443, to the person who he’s already resolving to add to his file - when this is all over.

* * *

_One hour earlier_

The man walks into the flower shop, glancing around. He makes his way to the counter and stops, drumming his fingers on the countertop.

After a few minutes, someone comes out of the back, drying her hand on a towel. She stops behind the counter and smiles at him. “Kann ich ihnen helfen?”

“Ah- I’m sorry, I don’t speak German,” says the man.

The woman‘s smile turns apologetic. “I’m sorry. Can I help you?” Her English is excellent. She studied for long nights to get it that way - she watched every single episode of Friends to practice casual American English, even when Ross was being an idiot.

“Yes,” says the man. He looks anxious, like he’s headed to an exam and hasn’t studied. “I need a bouquet of roses.”

“Of course,” says the woman, ringing him up. “For someone special?”

“Yes,” he says, without hesitation. He taps on his camera bag, sort of nervously. “Very.”

* * *

_Now_

You’re standing at the doorway to her hospital room, on the phone with CJ, the worry fading to a dull ache as you fall into the familiar rhythms of work and national crisis.

“Have you seen the news?” she asks, and you nod absently, attention still on Donna, before realizing CJ can’t see you.

“Yeah.”

A man passes by, watching the room numbers. He stops at the room after this one, then backs up, looking for the number that you’re standing in front of. You move to the side, obliging - _he’s probably here for 442,_ you think - but he stops as soon as he reads the number.

“Donna Moss?” he asks, and you do a double take. You’ve never seen this man in your life, but you nod anyway.

“Do you think we should...?” asks CJ. You readjust the phone on your shoulder, keeping an eye on the man as he passes you to go inside.

“You need to come out fighting. Leak a force-depletion report and blueprints for the invasion,” you say.

“Invasion?”

You’re too busy realizing that the man’s carrying a bouquet of flowers and an overnight bag to really consider the implications of her hesitation. More specifically, what it says about the president’s current thought process.

“Okay, that may be a little...”

You’ve officially stopped paying attention to CJ, because this man - whoever he is - has set the flowers down on the ground and is bending over Donna to-

to-

-they’re _kissing._

You almost wish Donna looked uncomfortable, or upset, or whatever, because it means that you could throw this guy out and not have to deal with _whatever_ this is.

Instead, you’re left halfway out in the hallway, on the phone with your coworker who’s on the other side of the Atlantic, while Donna is kissing this _guy_ with the world’s softest smile on her face.

“Josh?” says CJ. “You okay?”

You’ve never met this guy before. You don’t even know his _name._

And the fact that he’s in this room means that he’s somehow on Donna’s list, too.

_She has a life without me,_ you remind yourself, and wish it didn’t quite hurt _this_ much.

“Yeah,” you say to CJ, turning away from the scene in front of you, to the bleach-white hallway of hospitals, which you hate, and emptiness, which you hate almost as much. You squeeze your eyes shut, trying to block out the image that’s burned into your mind.

“I’m here,” you say, and try to focus.

**Author's Note:**

> HUGE THANK YOU TO kade ([@the-kade on tumblr](https://the-kade.tumblr.com/) and [royaitrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Royaitrash/pseuds/Royaitrash) on ao3) for german translations! they're so great.
> 
> this is generally more... artistic than what i usually write, but i'm really happy with how it turned out! ahem. anyways.
> 
> so! uh?? i love josh/donna?? i'm over [on tumblr](https://smallblueandloud.tumblr.com) as smallblueandloud and i'd love it if y'all dropped by to talk about this show and this ship with me! prompts are also open, so go wild! thanks for reading <3


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